What You Are
by Julia456
Summary: The big reveal... with a little twist.
1. sometimes it hurts

**Note:** This started out as another chapter for "Quite Peculiar", but it kind of… grew (and grew and grew, and then, just when I _thought_ it was done, it went and grew some more).

All of the chapter quotes are from "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills & Nash, a lovely four-part, seven-and-a-half-minute break-up song with its coda in incomprehensible Spanish. There's no school like the old school, kiddos!

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_._

_._

_Sometimes it hurts so badly  
__I must cry out loud  
__I am lonely_

_._

_._

.

Of all the places to hide and sulk on the _Leviathan,_ the observation bubble beneath the navigation room is probably the least comfortable.

Still, it's where Deryn finds herself two nights out from Istanbul, knees curled up to her chest and wondering why, if everything is so barking wonderful, she can't shake the feeling that nothing is _right_.

She's a decorated soldier. Led a mission that succeeded, despite the loss of her men; been given a hero's welcome home by Captain Hobbes and all the crew. Saved a revolution – half led it, really. Convinced Alek to drag his bum back aboard ship where he belongs. And her secret's still safe, it seems, even if she does sometimes catch that Count Volger giving her sinister looks.

So there's no reason for her to be losing sleep and freezing her toes off, is there?

Except for this daft ache in her chest whenever she thinks of Alek.

The worst part is, he's so _happy_. She knew he would be, she's glad to see it – but it rather makes it difficult to be miserable around him. Before Istanbul she was content to be his friend; even in the city it was still enough, most days. But now, all her resolutions to the contrary aside, she's coming face to face with the hard truth: she doesn't want to only be his friend. She doesn't want to only be his fellow soldier.

She wants _more_.

And that, she can't have. Ever.

There's a series of muffled clumps and then the hatch opens. Caught by surprise, she barely has time to drag her thoughts out of mooning girlishness; there's no hope of composing a reasonable excuse if it's a navigator come to check on the instruments.

But of course it's only Alek, glowworm lamp in hand and Bovril clutching at his jacket.

"There you are," he says.

Her heart lifts and hurts all at once, seeing him, seeing how the green light swings and spreads over his handsome face. _Daft_.

"How'd you find me?" she asks, sidling sideways so he doesn't drop down onto her head.

He got rid of his guard this morning, by solemnly promising to the captain that he and his men would behave themselves. She thinks it's unbelievably mad of Captain Hobbes to let the Clankers off their leashes just on a prince's word (not that she ever thought Alek and his men _needed_ to be guarded… well, maybe Volger), but at the same time she's a bit jealous. That sort of power would be dead convenient.

Bovril makes the short hop to Deryn's shoulder as Alek closes the hatch and sets the wormlamp on the floor. "Bovril thought you'd be here," he says.

"Here," Bovril says. Curls around her neck like a cat, warm and solid.

She scowls at the wee beastie even while she's stroking its soft fur. "How sodding perspicacious."

"What _are_ you doing here, Dylan?" Alek asks, finding a space and settling in beside her. "I'd have thought you'd be asleep by now, or at least in your cabin. I looked there first."

It's a foolish thing, to feel a thrill just because she knows he's been looking for her. She feigns diffidence. "Aye, I ought to be."

An especially cold wind swirls up around the reconnaissance camera. Bovril shivers on her shoulder, then goes to investigate.

"Thinking about Istanbul?" Alek asks.

She grimaces and sighs. "Trying not to."

After a moment he ventures, "Thinking about Lilit?"

"What?" she asks, so caught up in ignoring the heat of him beside her that she's genuinely confused. "Why would I…" Then she sees the smirk on his face, understands, and feels both a fool and angry all at once.

"Oh," she says flatly. "_That_."

At the time, her attic had been too rattled by everything else for her to understand Lilit's parting words. But since then, she's realized that the other girl had somehow figured out the truth… and yet had kissed her anyway, which makes no sense whatsoever. Pure dead mad, anarchists are.

"It's all right. I'll stop teasing," he says, although he still has that patronizing, superior air that puts her teeth on edge. "Actually, I suppose I'm rather jealous. I've never been kissed by a girl –"

"_Never?_" Her voice goes squeaky with the surprise of it. Even being the skinny daft girl that she is, she's been kissed before. And him growing up as a _prince_! – a handsome one, at that! Surely there had been girls queuing up to kiss him?

"Not like _that_," he says, sounding flustered – it's too dim to see if he's blushing. At least it's taken the princely smirk right out of his voice. But what replaces it is almost worse: a wistful sort of curiosity. "Was it… was it nice?"

She stares at him in disbelief. "Maybe without all the fighting and death and me being – never mind! I don't know. It wasn't awful."

Barking _strange_, mind. But not awful.

He shifts around, and it takes her a squick too long to realize it's because he wants to ask her more, but is embarrassed to do so. She rolls her eyes. Clankers! The simplest bits of biology throw them into mental spasms. Or maybe that's just another thing about being a sheltered royal: lots of tutors, but no one to tell you where things go and how it all works.

She sighs. Of all the topics they might be discussing… "Just ask, aye?"

He gives her a crooked grin, but can't quite look her in the eye. "What was it like?"

Deryn wants to say, _It doesn't matter, I'd rather be kissing __**you**_, but she can't. He's so close and she _can't_. Ever. It's better for both of them if he never finds out the truth about her, and she'll just have to resign herself to it.

Bovril, perched on the camera gears, picks that moment to say, "_Never_?" and then giggle.

Something snaps inside her brain. Before she quite knows what she's doing, she grabs a fistful of Alek's shirtfront with one hand and the back of his head with the other, and she kisses him full on the mouth.

He doesn't react straightaway – just lets her do it – and maybe something's broken in _his_ brain, because after a half-second his lips open beneath hers and she feels his hand ghost against her side and he's suddenly kissing her back.

Kissing _Dylan_ back.

She pulls away, shocked at herself, at him, at the madness of this thing she's done.

"Dylan," Alek says. Asks. Uncertain. Scared.

"It was like that," she says, although it wasn't; not by half. For once her voice is low and husky enough all on its own, and she has to swallow, then swallow again. Electricity burns heavy and hot in the air between them.

He stares at her, wide-eyed and speechless, for a long moment - until she feels like the cramped space is closing around her. Suffocating. Accusing.

She has to get out.

Before he can say another word, she's up the ladder and through the hatch, racing back to her cabin where she can shut the door and have a proper, girly cry into her pillow.

No one the wiser.


	2. no fun anymore

_It's getting to the point  
__Where I'm no fun anymore_

_._

_._

_._

"Is something the matter?"

Alek starts and looks at Volger, hoping that his sins are not as clearly written across his face as he feels they must be.

_Is something the matter?_

Yes, something is wrong. His only friend kissed him last night – kissed him the way one kisses a lover, not a friend – and Alek had not stopped it. Worse than that, he had _enjoyed_ it. He had kissed Dylan back with only the smallest hesitation, and had the other boy not suddenly fled, he's ashamed to admit that he very well might have gone on.

_Is something the matter?_

Yes, something is wrong. He needs to find Dylan and ask him _why _– talk to him – try to figure out what in God's name is to happen next. He doesn't want to lose his friend; just the idea fills him with a sickening anxiety. All the same, he can't say that he feels any better about this new and most unexpected turn to their friendship.

But Dylan has studiously avoided him this morning – no mean feat on an airship, especially considering how often their areas of responsibility overlap. The one time Alek managed to speak to him, Dylan pretended not to hear and promptly ran off.

_Is something the matter?_

Yes, something is wrong. He's trapped here in the count's cabin, discussing plans for their arrival in Tokyo, feigning calm when he rather wants to shout and storm. He's being asked to think about imperial protocol when all his mind can focus on is, apparently, the dark and hungry feel of Dylan's mouth on his.

_Is something the matter?_

Yes.

"No," Alek says stiffly. "I'm quite well."

Volger raises an eyebrow. "I meant with your creature."

Alek glances sidelong at Bovril, who's perched on his shoulder, clutching at his jacket and trembling all over. The loris has been like that since Dylan's abrupt departure last night – adding, when it saw the boy this morning, a keening, fretful noise, the sort that an infant wanting its mother might make.

Clearly the animal is perspicacious enough to pick up on Alek's unsettled mood, perhaps even the sudden confused distance between himself and Dylan. He feels guilty for burdening the poor thing with troubles beyond its understanding. All the same, if Volger catches him out because Bovril won't stop whimpering, Alek will be inclined to toss the creature off the ship.

"I haven't the slightest idea," he says, stroking Bovril's fur. The plaintive mewl fades. "Something it ate, perhaps."

Volger studies him critically for a long, painful moment, then makes a noise of dismissal and puts his attention on the papers on his desk. "Ungodly things. We have more to review, but I believe you are due at the engines, Your Highness."

Alek needs no further urging. He stands, saying, "I'm sure there will be enough time for everything," and begins for the cabin door.

"Aleksandar," the count says to his back, halting him. "When you see Mr. Sharp –"

_If __**Mr. Sharp**__ has his way, that will be never,_ Alek thinks, with a flash of anger so hot it takes him by surprise.

"- please inform him that the next lesson he misses will be his last. I have far more important things to attend to than a peasant midshipman's fencing."

"Don't call him that," Alek snaps – and realizes, too late, that he's given himself away. He did not, quite, sound like he was defending a _friend_. The sick sensation returns along with a wave of guilt. Weakly, he adds, "I'm sure he has a good reason for missing the lesson."

Count Volger narrows his eyes. "I'm sure," he says after the longest four seconds of Alek's life. "Please forgive me, Your Highness."

Alek nods and escapes. He puts on his pilot's uniform, leaves Bovril in his stateroom to nap, and takes his turn at the engines, letting the wind and noise drown out the cacaphony of thoughts roiling in his mind. It's the closest thing to peace that he's found since last night, and he's reluctant to leave for any reason.

But Hoffman discovers that one of the gauges is loose, and so, after some discussion, Alek is sent back inside the _Leviathan_ to fetch the proper tools from the machine room. He takes some solace in the fact that he can do this without an escort; honestly, he had not believed that Captain Hobbes would accept his word of honor. But - as Volger predicted - wartime makes for strange bedfellows.

_You have no idea, Count, of just how strange indeed_, Alek thinks now.

He's just climbed down the last ladder when he sees Dylan. The other boy is standing farther down the corridor to the machine room, back straight and chin up, unblinking, as the bosun shouts into his face.

"- not the bloody judge of that! You'll take your orders, same as everyone else, and if you bollix it up, _you're off the sodding ship_!"

There's more – a lot more. Alek, unobserved, the tools forgotten, watches in stunned fascination. He's never had anyone yell at him like that; the worst Volger has ever managed are taunts regarding his ignorance or his parentage. He would be tempted to lash back, he thinks. More than tempted.

But Dylan takes the abuse without flinching, even finding the wherewithal to deliver a crisp, "No sir!" or "Aye sir!" where one is called for.

Finally Mr. Rigby dismisses Dylan, who snaps off a salute. Alek presses himself behind the ladder to avoid being seen by either of them.

First Dylan misses his fencing lesson, and now he's done something so severe as to draw the ire of the bosun… It occurs to Alek that he may not be the only one who's been thrown out of sorts by what happened.

He hears Mr. Rigby's boots clattering up the far ladder, a hatch opening and closing, and decides it's safe enough; Hoffman is waiting for those tools. There's no sign of Dylan in the corridor, but when he steps inside the machine room, he comes face to face with his erstwhile friend.

Dylan is sitting on a crate, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. Crying.

_Good_, he thinks, anger flaring, wanting to see Dylan hurt, wanting him wounded. It seems justice for how Dylan's treated him today – ignoring him, ducking him. One small cruelty after another; yes, he deserves this.

Just as quickly, though, the impulse for revenge dies, leaving Alek as lost as ever.

"Hello, Dylan," Alek says, as the other boy comes to his feet in an instant, poised to run.

But Alek is standing between him and the hatch, and he grabs the door with one hand and pulls it securely shut. No more escapes.

"Barking spiders," Dylan says, swiping a sleeve over his face and sounding more exasperated than anything else. "What do you want? I need to be dorsal again in ten minutes, or Mr. Rigby's –"

"_Why?_"

It's hardly the eloquent question Alek was hoping to ask, but it's what he most wants to know. Dylan drops his gaze to the floor, distractedly wiping at the tearstains on his face. "Why what? Why am I crying like a perfect ninny?"

"No." He knows that much, at least. "Why…" He clears his throat and resolves not to be, as Dylan would say, such a ninny about it. "Last night. Why did you do that?"

Dylan tries to laugh. It might be more convincing if he could look Alek in the eye. Or if the laugh didn't sound half-strangled. "It was only a joke, of course. To make up for you teasing me about Lilit."

Alek studies the other boy for a moment. Coldly, he says, "I don't believe you."

Dylan wipes at his face once more, with a touch of anger this time. He meets Alek's eyes at last, his own snapping blue fire. "Well, that's the truth, aye? Why _else_ would I do something daft like that?"

"I don't know," Alek says, but he does. He's preternaturally aware of the other boy – where Dylan is standing, his smallest movements – and the air between them is crackling as if it's been charged with electricity. He wishes it was; a Tesla cannon would be preferable just now. He has been telling himself that it was merely the shock of it that's kept last night's kiss in the forefront of his mind, but now... Now he feels slightly nauseous even as heat blooms beneath his skin. God's wounds, he can't possibly be attracted to another boy!

"Have a think on it, then, long as you like," Dylan says, "while I'm doing my barking job," and starts for the door.

Alek acts on instinct and grabs Dylan by the shoulder to stop him. Dylan breaks his hold and tries to push past, but Alek has five years of wielding heavy fencing sabers to his advantage, and pushes harder. Dylan stumbles backwards a step.

"No," Alek says, angry now. Furious.

Dylan's eyes narrow. "Let me leave."

Alek takes a step forward and pushes him again. Now Dylan's back is to the machine room's outer wall, and he's more trapped than ever. "_No._"

"Stubborn Clanker _bastard_ -"

It's almost a relief when Dylan attempts to get past him again. It means that Alek can freely retaliate, and he does: he shoves Dylan into the wall, hard enough to hurt, and kisses him.


	3. like it is

_Can I tell it like it is?  
__(Help me I'm suffering)  
__Listen to me baby_

_._

_._

_._

Deryn will never understand boys.

Whenever she thinks she's finally got them sorted, they'll do something completely barking daft. Like Alek, just now, starting a fight with her because she kissed him the other night... and then kissing her again.

Well, kissing _Dylan_ again. And that's an important wee detail there, but somehow she can't bring herself to be in too much of a hurry to stop and tell him, for all that her head's still ringing from that last shove.

Lord, but he's nice to kiss. He has nice soft lips, and a nice warm tongue, and he makes the loveliest breathless noise when she puts her arms about his neck and pulls him close - or as close as they can get, anyway, with all this gear on. He doesn't know a thing about kissing, but she's not going to stop and complain. She could go on like this forever.

Except she needs to get her bum up to the spine, on the double, or Mr. Rigby will have her drummed out of the Air Service.

"Alek," she says against his mouth, a fair bit breathless herself; only understandable, given the circumstances. She gets a hand between them and forces them apart a squick. "Blisters. Stop!"

He starts – she can feel the jolt – and steps back hastily. Eyes wide. Hands raised, as if he thinks she might take a swing at him. And face red as a tomato.

"_En-entschuldigung!_" he says, breathing hard, then swallows and tries again in English: "Dylan, I – that is – I apologize if -"

"Don't," she says, flinching back from her false name and the apology both. Some of the exhilaration of the kiss drains away. It's a dream come true, aye, except for the part where he still thinks she's a boy.

_Tell him_, she commands herself, and her heart thuds faster just at the thought. "I have to report, Alek – but first, I need to tell you –"

"It's all right," he says quickly. Too quickly. He looks at her, then away, flustered and uncertain and so handsome it hurts. "Dylan –"

She's shaking her head before he even finishes the name, and he falls silent. "No, it sodding isn't all right. And it's important, what I need to say. I should've told you sooner – I meant to – I just couldn't, because of who you are, _what_ you are…" The words, so clear in her brain ("_I'm a girl_"), are getting tangled on their way to her mouth. She takes a deep breath.

The door opens.

She jerks farther away from Alek. Talk about difficult to explain – if it's one of the officers, or Dr. Barlow, there's no hope – but it's only Newkirk.

"Oi, Mr. Sharp, there you are!" he exclaims. "Mr. Rigby's all in a furor, looking for you –!"

"Aye, he found me," Deryn says, somewhat sourly. She can't help but be distracted from everything else by the memory of the bosun's tirade (a tongue-lashing she'd earned fairly, it must be said).

"What did he want?" Newkirk asks, then finally notices she's not alone. "Oh, er, hullo, Your Highness."

"Hello, Mr. Newkirk," Alek says, gone stiff and princely again. Deryn bites down on a groan. If she looks half as guilty as he does, they might as well hang signs around their necks and be done with it.

Newkirk, luckily, is fairly oblivious. "What're you looking for, uh, sir?"

"There's a loose gauge," Alek says, "on the port engine. Excuse me." He sets about rummaging through the crates as if he'd been doing nothing else – excepts he still looks guilty as all hell.

Deryn coughs to get Newkirk's attention back onto her. "Mr. Rigby wanted to give me another medal, what else?"

Newkirk grimaces. "That bad, then?"

"I've had worse." She shrugs, trying for nonchalance. In truth it'd left her dead rattled. But she doesn't want to stand around blethering on with Newkirk; she wants to finish telling Alek her secret and get back to kissing, if he'll let her. Inspiration strikes. "Go on – I'm helping Alek."

Alek spoils that plan by saying then, "I have what I need."

She could hit him. Boys! Barking clueless. No wonder her secret's gone unnoticed for so long.

Deryn privately seethes while Newkirk leaves with them. She can't be skylarking any longer, and she can't figure out a way to talk to Alek with sodding Newkirk right there.

But at least she's certain now that Alek _wants_ to talk with her. Last night and this morning were awful, thinking she'd ruined everything in that one moment of madness. She couldn't bring herself to be face-to-face with him, just on the chance that he might tell her he wanted nothing further to do with her.

Of course, now she has to worry whether he's going to like Deryn as much as he seems to like Dylan. And never mind the problem that she's had since the beginning: he's still royal and she's still common. Even if he does like Deryn, who's to say he'll want anything more to do with her?

Is she really strong enough steal a few kisses and have done? Maybe she _was _better off before; now she knows what she'll be missing.

_Blisters_, she thinks, _I'd never have left Glasgow if I'd known it would get this complicated!_

Even with Newkirk hovering, she does manage to grab Alek by the sleeve and whisper, "Meet me in the storerooms after last dog watch."

He seems surprised, but says "All right," before she hurries off.

The rest of her day passes in a nervous blur. Proving herself to Mr. Rigby keeps her on her toes, but there are still too many pockets of time where she has nothing else to occupy her brain.

She tries rehearsing what, exactly, she'll tell Alek. The plain truth seems best: three words, and spit them out fast before she loses her nerve or someone else wanders by. Then she can explain herself… if he even wants to hear it.

By the time the second dog watch ends, she's half a wreck from worry. She hurries down from the spine, through to the gondola and then to the lowest level, where the storerooms are. They're nearly full now, and thus a squick harder to sneak into, but sure to be deserted at this time of night.

A dim green light glows beneath one of the doors. She rubs her sweating palms against her trousers and opens it.

Alek is waiting inside, glowworm lamp sitting on a pile of lumpy burlap sacks. He stiffens when she comes in, then relaxes and smiles; she's too nervous to return the expression. There's no sign of Bovril. Maybe the beastie is asleep. Just as well – the fewer witnesses, the better.

She holds a finger to her lips and gestures for him to cover the lamp while she shuts the door again.

The sudden darkness leaves her blind for a minute. She stands still until her eyes adjust, then finds a perch on some of the sacks. He sidles closer, although he doesn't try to sit.

"Dylan?" he asks, keeping his voice low.

"Aye," she whispers. "Just… give me a moment? This is difficult."

"Of course." He puts a hand on her shoulder, as he's done a dozen times before; but this time, after a moment of hesitation, his hand slides down her arm and catches her fingers, squeezing briefly before he lets go. The clumsy, well-meaning sweetness of the gesture pricks at her heart.

Oh, God, if it's Dylan he wants…

No. She has to tell him. Once he knows the truth, everything will be fine.

She takes a breath. All of their important conversations have been like this, she realizes suddenly: just the two of them in the dark. Maybe it's because, in the dark, neither of them have to pretend quite so hard to be what they're not.

"I trust you," she whispers, because that's the most important thing, even though she knows he'll think otherwise as soon as she admits the truth. "I won't make you promise not to… tell anyone, because I know you won't, but I do want you to promise – to promise that you'll hear me out till I'm finished, aye?"

"Of course," he says again, soft and a bit confused.

"Say it," she demands, abruptly and superstitiously terrified that if he doesn't, this'll all go pear-shaped. Well, _more_ pear-shaped than it's bound to be. She adds, "Please."

He thinks about it for a moment, then nods. "I promise."

She closes her eyes, gathering up courage. It'd be easier to blurt the words out like this, not looking at him, hiding behind the dark, but he deserves better. So she opens her eyes, looks square into his, and says it.

"I'm a girl."


	4. have mercy

**Note:** Aaaaand with this chapter we're at the halfway mark... but we haven't hit the nadir yet. Mwhaha.

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.

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_Remember what we've said and done and felt  
__About each other  
__Oh babe, have mercy_

_._

_._

_._

The split second before disaster is the worst.

You have time enough to be aware of what's going to happen, and to know, as well, that there's nothing left to be done about preventing it. Like a misstep in a Stormwalker – that heartbeat of pure vertigo as control slips away from you.

After that, the impact is almost welcome. At least it's done with.

Alek stares at his friend, shadowed in the darkness. He gives a laugh that's more disbelief than amusement. "You – what? You can't be."

"I think I'd bloody know if I'm a girl or not," Dylan says.

"But I've seen –" He stops himself, because he hasn't. He's never seen Dylan getting dressed, never without his shirt... even at the tailor's in Istanbul – that wasn't fussiness, that was protecting a secret – and (a sudden jolt of memory) Dylan had refused a bath at the Swiss castle, just like Dr. Barlow – and Volger! _That's_ what the count had threatened Dylan with! – and that damned loris, always going on about _Mr._ Sharp.

It all makes a horrible, impossible sort of sense.

"God's wounds," Alek says, stunned. His voice sounds hollow to himself. "You are."

"My name's Deryn," he – _she_ – says. "I had to be a boy to join the Service, and I had to join the Service to fly. That's all it was meant to be. I didn't know I'd meet _you_ –"

A girl. His friend is a girl.

"Stop," he says, and puts his head between his hands until the shocked ringing leaves his ears. This is worse than vertigo; this is almost – though at the same time not nearly – as bad as his parents' deaths. He was expecting... He can't remember what he was expecting, if he ever really knew; but he was most certainly not expecting _this_. "Stop, please."

She does, for a moment, but then says softly, voice catching: "You promised."

"I know that," he says, rather more harshly than he would ordinarily speak to a girl, or to Dylan, for that matter. She flinches, but his shock is giving way to anger, and he tells himself that he doesn't care. "Forgive me if I'd prefer to take the news in small portions."

She says nothing. He can feel the heat of her body beside him. Hears the faint, shallow rasp of her breath.

His only friend is _a __girl_.

After a moment he dredges up some remnant of courtesy and asks, "You said that your name was -?"

"Deryn."

"Deryn," he repeats, testing out the word, and she nods. It's not a bad name… for a girl. Betrayal twists at him anew, sharp and sick and cold. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to. I nearly did, right at the beginning – d'you remember, the lady boffin walked in and tossed me out on my bum."

"_But after that_," he says, biting off each word, somehow remembering to keep his voice down. "For heaven's sake, we were in Istanbul for a month – you never said a word!"

Her mumbled response is too quiet for him to catch.

"What?"

"I'm _common_. And you're a barking _archduke_. You said yourself you'd have to run a mile if…" Her voice falters and she wipes at her face with her jacket sleeve. "As long as I was Dylan, I thought I could at least go on being your friend."

He stares at her incredulously. "I certainly can't be your friend _now_! We shouldn't even be alone in the same room! And what do you mean, I said I'd have to run a mile?"

"It's what you said about Lilit. If you'd liked her."

The exact details of the conversation in the hotel room come back to him, and he gives a scornful laugh. "You actually think –"

She slaps her hand over his mouth before he can say the rest, and his initial reaction – to fight back – is stopped by feel of her skin against his and the sudden rush of…

_God's wounds._

"Aye," she says fiercely. "I do."

He pushes her hand down, scowling because she's right. _I ought to be relieved_, he thinks, that Dylan has turned out to be Deryn; instead he's angry, betrayed, and full of a peculiar grief for the friend he'll never see again.

"That's optimistic of you," he says, with an acidity that Volger would be proud of.

"Clanker bastard," she says. It lacks heat. In fact, she sounds suddenly exhausted. He halfway expects her to leave, but she stays exactly where she is, and, bound by his promise to hear her out to the end, he stays as well.

Or so he tells himself.

Eventually she sighs. "Everything else is true. About my da, and all that. I only lied to you about being a boy."

He's shaking his head, because that's the one part that he can't comprehend. "You _had_ to be a boy? There was no other way?"

"Maybe there was," she says, voice small. "Aye, I'm certain there was, and I was just too daft to see it. But… I _have_ to fly, Alek. It'll kill me if I can't, I know it."

He feels himself wavering, feels sympathy for his friend… except that this is not his friend. This is a stranger. A liar. He told her everything, and she told him nothing. And then she made him think – made him _want_ -

"How dare you," he says, furious.

"Alek –"

He cuts her off, but he's too angry to make much sense: "How dare you do _that_ – when I thought – and you aren't even – you're - I don't even know what you are!"

He realizes that his fists are clenched so tightly that it hurts, and for a heartbeat he wants nothing more than for his _friend_ to try to push past him again. This time he would give her a real fight, for all that she's taller.

And there's another injury to his pride: a girl shouldn't be taller than he is. She is unnatural through and through - no more a proper female than the _Leviathan_ is a proper whale.

"I'm your friend," she says, voice shocked and hollow. "I've always been your friend."

"Are you finished?" he demands.

She opens and closes her mouth, then says, "Aye, but… Alek, you don't – I mean, I don't – I didn't do it to _hurt_ you! Any of it!"

He doesn't want to hear that. It would make things more complicated, and right at this moment he needs pure, simple anger.

"I won't tell anyone," he says, crossing to the door. "But I don't want to speak with you again."

"Alek!" she says, but he's already leaving.

He can't bear to spend another second in Dylan – Deryn's – presence. There are, however, only so many places you can run to on an airship. Instead of wandering aimlessly, he decides to get some answers.

He goes to Volger's stateroom and raps on the door, pushing it open before there's a response.

The count is still awake, sitting at the table he uses as a desk and writing industriously, papers in a tidy spread around him.

"Yes, Your Highness?" Volger asks without glancing up.

Alek shuts the door behind him and says, "You knew."

Volger doesn't blink – or stop writing. "Most likely."

Alek puts his hands on the table, wide apart, and leans over. "You knew _about Deryn_."

The count sets his pen down and shuffles some of the papers together. "Is that her name? Rather masculine. You'd almost think her parents wanted this outcome."

Alek pulls away from the table as if it's burned him. Betrayed by his tutor as well as his friend; God's wounds, of all the silly things, he has the urge to cry. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Volger folds his hands on top of the table and meets Alek's eyes at last. His own expression is hard. "And what would that have accomplished? Secrets are valuable currency, Aleksandar, and you are prone to giving them away."

It's the truth, and perhaps that's why it cuts so deeply.

"I suppose she told you," Volger adds. "It would be too much to hope that you uncovered the deception on your own."

Alek stands where he is, anger and humilation and sadness warring within him, and says nothing. He, too, is exhausted. He just wants this to be over. He just wants things to return to the way they were. He wants his friend back. He wants that clarity of purpose he felt in Istanbul. He wants…

Lord help him, he wants his mother and father.

But the count isn't finished: "She seems to have aspirations of developing a more intimate relationship with you. Ludicrous, of course, but you will need to be on your guard. No doubt that's why she's brought you into her confidence now. I had expected this sooner, truthfully, based on her behavior in Istanbul. Pathetic."

Alek takes a breath that's halfway to a sob, and might have degraded himself further but for a knock on the stateroom door.

He's closest, so, rank be damned, he opens it. Deryn is on the other side, breathing rushed, as if she's run after him. He looks at her and can't imagine how he ever saw a boy.

How he ever saw someone he trusted.

Desperately, she says, "Alek, please, I know I bollixed it all up, but…"

"I thought I made myself clear," he says, cold, quite aware of Count Volger's attention on his back. "Stay away, from me and my men. Or I _will_ tell Captain Hobbes."

The desperation on her face gives way to a sudden and fathomless pain.

"Don't you have somewhere to be, _Miss_ Sharp?" Volger says behind him, putting a cruelly mocking emphasis on her correct title.

Her eyes dart to the count, then refocus on Alek. He does his best to meet her gaze without any emotion - to be imperiously removed - but she has no such compunction.

Quietly, sincerely, she says, "I'm sorry I ever barking met you, Aleksandar Ferdinand."

And then she's gone.


	5. are not now

_Don't let the past remind us  
__Of what we are not now_

.

.

.

Everything's ruined.

Deryn reports on time the next three mornings, hair combed, face washed, boots polished, uniform turned out. She takes her orders from Mr. Rigby and goes about her duties like a good middy.

But everything's ruined.

It was supposed to be better once he knew, and instead it's a right sodding shambles.

And it _hurts_. She can't believe how much; it's almost as bad as when her da died. Indeed, that's what it's like – as though someone's died. When she takes a breath she can feel splinters in her heart, and when she gives herself a moment her brain zips right back to that last, awful moment when Alek told her to stay away.

It's like burning your mouth on something hot. It hurts, but you can't stop running your tongue over it.

_I thought I made myself clear._

Even sodding Newkirk notices something's off, though it takes him until the third morning. As they're feeding the fléchette bats that day he says, "You're not still worried about Rigby tossing you off the ship?"

" 'Course not," she says. It's the truth: she hasn't been worried about _that_ at all. "I'm the best middy he has, aye?"

Newkirk throws her a sour look and a half-hearted insult, which of course she has to respond to, and the familiar routine of work and teasing Newkirk manages to (almost) distract her for most of the day.

But then, back on the spine and working with the riggers, the bosun interrupts them. "Mr. Sharp! I hear you speak German."

"Aye sir, a little," she says, too surprised to be anything less than honest.

"Get over to the starboard engine and translate for Mr. Hirst, then. Don't need him getting into another dust-up with one of those Clanker fellows."

_Stay away from me and my men._

She swallows around a sudden tight dread. If anyone's getting into trouble with Clankers today, it won't be the ship's engineer. "Mr. Rigby, sir, I'm not so good with the technical bits – "

The bosun's face clouds over, and he steps in closer. "Are you _arguing_ with me, Midshipman? Questioning your orders again?"

_Or I __**will**__ tell Captain Hobbes._

The dread changes to nauseous panic. "N-no sir. Just wondering – sir – if I'm the right man for the job."

"Starboard engine," Rigby barks. "Now!"

"Aye sir!" she says, and scrambles to do as ordered, hoping she doesn't end up being sick over the side of the ship.

She hasn't been on either of the engines while they're aloft and running, and the first thing she notices is how barking _loud_ it is. The second thing she notices is how barking _cold_ it is. Away from the beastie's side and the cushion of calm provided by the airflow, the wind cuts right through you. No wonder Alek always looks half-frozen.

_I don't even know what you are!_

Burnt and splintered.

Deryn reports to Mr. Hirst and then turns to Alek's man Hoffman. She's been on good terms with him, even though she knows Bauer and Klopp better from their time in Istanbul... but right now she'd prefer to be anywhere else.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Sharp," Hoffman says, nodding. The greeting seems friendly enough.

"Good afternoon," she says back. She clears her throat and tries not to be nervous. "Where is – um, the archduke?"

"Speaking with Count Volger and the lady doctor, I think," Hoffman says. He gives her an uncertain sort of smile. "They have many plans to make. I understand you and His Highness are not on such good terms anymore?"

"No," she says; her own smile is grim. "We bloody well aren't."

He pats her shoulder awkwardly, and Deryn almost wants to weep. Blisters! This has to stop. She's becoming teary as an old woman; what kind of soldiering is _that_?

"What are you talking about?" Hirst asks, impatient.

"Just the weather, sir," she says, switching back to English.

"Well, stop," Hirst says. "I need you to translate, not chatter like schoolgirls."

"Aye sir," she says. To Hoffman, she says, "Never mind about me and His Highness." And that's the last bit of Clanker-talk she's comfortable with for a good long time.

She wasn't lying when she told the bosun she was bad at the technical words; it takes her forever just to understand what Hoffman and Hirst are on about, and twice as long to translate it in a way that makes any sort of sense – and all of it she has to half-shout to be heard over the engines. She learns more about Clanker engines than she ever expected. The real trick will be remembering any of it past today; her attic hasn't been stuffed so full in a long time.

But at least it keeps her mind fully on the task at hand. For a while she almost forgets that everything's ruined.

And then, just before the end of the watch, Alek shows up.

He sees her, how can he not, and his eyes narrow behind his pilot's goggles.

"Good, _finally_," Hirst says, unable to hide his irritation with her or his relief at having a translator who knows something about engines. "You're dismissed, Midshipman."

"Yes sir," she says, and gets out of there as fast as she can, not looking at Alek, pretending he doesn't exist, pretending his presence isn't burning a hole clean through her.

She takes her supper and pretends her fingers aren't trembling.

Newkirk drops down beside her as she's eating. "What did you _do_?" he moans, letting his head thunk onto the table.

"Nothing!" she says - too fast, and squeaking high like a girl. Luckily Newkirk is a ninny and too wrapped up in his own troubles to notice.

"I just got caught by the lady boffin. Can you believe _this_ - she's going with the Clankers on some sort of mission once we land. A _diplomatic_ mission. And I have to go along as her assistant, because she doesn't want you." Newkirk buries his face in his hands. "Nothing but standing around and _talking_! For _hours_!"

"Aye, I'll cry for you all night," she says tartly. Humiliation tastes bitter. During their meeting earlier, Alek must have asked Dr. Barlow not to bring her along. What a perfectly rotten thing to do!… not that she loves being used as the lady boffin's personal "cabin boy"… but it's the principle of it!

Slowly, she realizes that the raw, bewildered hurt has begun to harden into something else. Scarring over, burying the wound.

_I thought I made myself clear._

_That's optimistic of you._

_I don't even know what you are!_

Anger slithers up her spine and grabs fistfuls of her brain.

Just because Alek knows she's a girl doesn't mean she has to act like one. A boy wouldn't stand for this sort of treatment, she's dead certain of that. And she won't either.

"_Diplomacy_. Ugh. I'd almost rather get hit by that lightning cannon again," Newkirk says to the table, his voice muffled and pathetic.

Deryn smacks the back of his head. Hard. "Stop being a ninny," she orders, and leaves before he can do more than give an undignified yelp.

She's skylarking in the worst way, but she stalks through the gondola's corridors, looking for Alek, who ought to be off the engines by now. He's not anywhere; she thinks for a moment and then decides to check the gastric channel. Sure enough, she catches him just outside the heads - on his way out, luckily, and not in.

He pauses mid-step when he sees her, and she takes the opportunity to go on the attack. "You're going to follow me, right now, and no arguments," she says. "Five minutes and then never again, just like you wanted."

"If this is about earlier," he says, "Hoffman explained. I know you were under orders. I'll overlook it."

"Well, aren't you the sodding picture of charity," she retorts. "Five minutes. Let's go."

Deryn takes off for the beehives in the bow; half expecting him to ignore her and go on his way, she's gratified to hear his boots on the aluminum walkway behind her.

She hasn't been to see the bees in what feels like ages, but the hives are still humming and buzzing right along. The noise is as deafening, in its own way, as the engines. You can shout here and not be heard more than a few feet away.

"Charming," Alek says, wrinkling his nose. A bee lands on his shoulder and he flinches away as if it might skewer him at any moment.

"They don't have stingers," she says impatiently. "And we're running out of secret places. It was either here or the Huxley rookery, and I know how much you hate _that_."

It's quite a trick, to look down your nose at someone who's at least three inches taller. Maybe that's something they only teach princes. "Get on with it," he says, cold and imperial.

_I thought I made myself clear._

She draws herself up to her full height so she can scowl down - truly down - at him. "Aye, I will: you've no right to treat me like I've got some kind of barking disease! I saved your life and I got you clear of the Germans, and you owe me enough _respect_ -"

"I never asked you to drag me back aboard this monstrosity!" he says, interrupting her, angry. "I never asked you to join me in Istanbul, either, so don't think you –"

"I was only _in_ Istanbul because I was worried about you!"

"Oh, yes, all right, let's talk about what you did in Istanbul -"

"Aside from saved your bum, aye, because -"

"You did not! And it's perfectly disgusting the way you led Lilit on –"

"_Led her on_ -? She knew, _Dummkopf!_ That's what her kissing me was all about!"

That clearly makes as much sense to him as it does to her: none. He blinks, frowning in confusion, momentarily sidetracked from the argument. "Why would she…"

"Because she's a mad anarchist – who knows?" she says, throwing her hands up. Unlike him, she's still spoiling for a fight. She wants to say something that'll stick in his brain, something that'll leave a sore spot for him to worry over these next three days, something that'll dig splinters into his chest at night. "Besides, _you_ were the one trying to push us together every chance you got."

He reddens. "If I'd _known_ –!"

"The _loris_ knew! Barking spiders, Alek – you kissed me _twice_ and didn't figure it out. Some emperor you'll be!"

That one finds its mark. Instantly the cold mask drops back into place and he steps away from her, straightening his clothes with the fussiness of an old man. "At least I know where I'm supposed to be," he says, voice clipped, "and _what_ I'm supposed to be."

Of all the pretentious clart! She puts her hands on her hips and glares. "You think I _like_ being Dylan? D'you have any idea how barking _hard_ it is to be a boy? You're all cracked in the attic!"

"That's one problem you can easily solve," he says; she has the sense he wasn't truly listening to what she just said. Surprises, surprises. Has he listened to anything she's said, really, since he found out the truth? Since he's known she wasn't a boy?

The anger digs in deeper.

"When we land in Tokyo," he goes on, "you'll tell the captain who you are and leave the _Leviathan_. Dr. Barlow can escort you to the British embassy. I'm certain they will take you in until proper arrangements can be made to send you home."

He looks so pleased with this idea that she wonders if he realizes: it's perfectly daft.

"I'm not going home," she says, speaking slow and clear, partly because she's furious, partly because you should enunciate when you're talking to a looby. "There's a war on. They need me here."

"Girls don't belong in war," he says. It has the air of automaticity, as if this is something he says and thinks all the time. Aye, just like a proper little Clanker: only doing what his clockworks tell him. "You see what it did to Lilit. If you were able to think about this _rationally_, like a man, you'd know that I'm right. You're not safe here. You have to go home."

"You're so sodding _stupid_!" she exclaims. "Don't you understand this is _the_ _only thing I've got?_ No one's sending me secret letters, no one's left me gold bars, no one's keeping a throne warm for my bum! If I go home, _that's it,_ it's all over for me!"

He scoffs, sounding exactly like that Count Volger. "Not a moment too soon, obviously."

Something snaps in her brain.

Before she quite knows what she's doing, her fingers have curled into a fist and she's laid a punch across his smug and princely face. He stumbles backward, boots clanging on the walkway, one hand going to his cheek.

Deryn shakes out her hand, biting down on a curse. That barking _hurts_.

She halfway expects him to hit back, but instead he just stares at her with wide eyes.

"You hit me," he says, astonished.

"Aye, because I'm not some daft doll lassie you can put in a box and hide away in a corner! I was your _friend_ – I risked my _neck_ for you – I _loved _you! I still love you, you Clanker bastard! God only knows why."

She's out of breath and shaking all over, as if she's run a mile. The bees drone, but nothing's going to hide those words.

He stares at her. Just stares. A large red welt is already spreading across his cheek.

"You're going to have a black eye," she says, apropos of nothing. Her knuckles throb fiercely; she'll come out of this with some bruises herself.

He seems to shake off his daze a little – enough to touch his cheek again and wince. He blinks and looks at her as if he's never seen her before. "Deryn," he says, calling her by her proper name for the first time.

That one word, spoken in his voice, flies straight to the center of her wounded heart. She sucks in a breath.

There was a man on her street in Glasgow, growing up, who kicked his dog whenever he'd been drinking too much. It had broken her heart to watch that dog yelp and cower and cringe away, only to go slinking right back, tail wagging and eyes begging, the first time the sod crooked a finger.

_I don't even know what you are!_

She stiffens her spine and tells herself that she's smarter than some cracked-attic dog. Bad enough she admitted that she loves him; she's not going to humiliate herself any further.

"I'm sorry for what I did," she says, "but I'm not sorry for being who I am. And if you'd think about it _rationally_, like a man, you'd see why I think you can get stuffed!"

She turns on her heel and storms away.

Blisters, but she feels better.


	6. make it right

…_.losing love, lamenting  
__Change my life  
__Make it right_

.

.

.

Alek will never understand girls.

Nothing Deryn has done in the last week makes any sort of sense whatsoever. First she kissed him – neglecting to mention, prior to that, her true gender. Then, after all was revealed and he had been thoroughly humiliated, she said she wished she'd never met him. _Then_ she forced a confrontation even after he made it clear that he wanted nothing further to do with her, either.

Now she's blacked his eye while simultaneously confessing that she loves him.

_I loved you! I still love you, you Clanker bastard!_

God's wounds.

He somehow makes his way back to his stateroom, spine stiff, pride fractured, acutely conscious of the eyes of the crew. What he must look like… A little boy who quarreled with a friend and lost.

Not that far from the truth. All too accurate, really.

He can feel the injury taking hold and spreading across his cheekbone and eye socket, radiating a dull, throbbing pain as it goes.

In his room he examines himself in the small mirror bolted to the wall. He is, in fact, going to have a black eye. Quite a nice one, too, if the size of the deepening red welt is any indication.

His first black eye.

"And from a _girl_," he says to no one. A girl he's treated with admirable fairness, really. He's held to his promise and hasn't said a word to Captain Hobbes, although he imagines that, were he in the captain's position, this is the sort of information that he would gratefully receive.

He ought to tell. He ought to have struck back.

He ought to have never left the castle in Switzerland.

"Ouch," Bovril says, clambering up to his shoulder. Over the last three days, the loris has continued to tremble and mewl intermittently, but Alek has told himself that he has no interest whatsoever in easing Bovril's discomfort.

A infant looking for its mother, indeed. But what a mother!

"Yes," Alek says. He touches the bruise gingerly and is somehow surprised when it still makes him wince. "I didn't think girls could punch hard enough to hurt."

Bovril cocks its head and chuckles. "_Mr._ Sharp," it says for the first time in three days, sounding smug.

_Some emperor __**you'll**__ be!_

He scowls. "Yes, I've figured that out, thank you. Or rather _no_ thanks to you, perhaps. I'll have you know that 'Mr. Sharp' is not much of a clue."

The loris hunkers down. "_Mr_. Sharp. _Dummkopf_."

"Yes, it seems we've established that, too," he says, uncertain if the comment is directed at him or at Deryn, but disliking it either way. He sighs and looks again in the mirror. "What a catastrophe. Count Volger was right about that."

_Catastrophe_ was only one of the words Volger had used to describe the situation during their surreptitious discussion this morning. Other terms had included _improper_, _ridiculous_, and _a complication you cannot afford_.

All correct. And yet, when pressed on the matter, Alek had been unable to tell Volger whether or not he considered the friendship severed… much to his tutor's disapproval. He'd apologized, but instinctively balked at the idea of giving up the last connection to his friend, however tenuous.

He could answer that question _now_, he thinks bitterly. Of course he and Dylan – _Deryn -_ aren't friends any longer. How could they be?

_I loved you! I still love you._

Something unexpected and very much like grief pierces deep into his chest. He can't, he tells himself. He can't possibly be _sorry_. No one in his place could be _sorry_. He is furious, and somewhat overwhelmed, but he is not regretful.

No. He's mistaken; it's only confusion from the blow to his head. He needs a doctor.

"Come along," he says to Bovril. "Shall we see what horrid sort of Darwinist medicine the boffins practice?"

"Medicine," the loris says, eyes bright.

Alek takes a final look at his eye, then departs to find a doctor. Having already had a dose of Dr. Barlow at her scheming best this afternoon, he's not thrilled by the idea of another meeting. He wants to find Dr. Busk, the ship's actual doctor.

But Dr. Busk isn't in.

Dr. Barlow, however, is.

She catches sight of him before he can make a retreat. "My goodness," the doctor says mildly. "That's a new development. What happened?"

"Nothing," Alek says quickly, eye throbbing.

"I see. Is this the same 'nothing' that has your loris so beside itself with upset?"

His loris trembles and murmurs, "My goodness."

Blast. He reaches up and rubs Bovril's ears to calm it. "I didn't know that you were still, ah, observing Bovril."

"Of course," Dr. Barlow says, her own loris perking up and trilling softly at Bovril. "And I must object to your quarreling with Mr. Sharp. The loris has bonded with both of you; it is essential to its mental well-being that you remain on good terms."

_Yes, heaven forbid we upset the loris_, he thinks sourly. He wonders why he even bothers to attempt hiding anything – it's not going to happen on this airship, not as long as people such as Count Volger and Dr. Barlow are around. He has a sudden flash of appreciation for Deryn's lengthy deception.

Then he has a sudden flash of self-disgust. He does not want to forgive her, does not want to be her friend, does not want to think about her bright blue eyes, does not want to remember kissing her, the small gasp she made, her mouth warm and wet and open beneath his -

Oh, God's wounds. Too late.

He clears his throat and gestures towards his wounded cheek. "As you can see, it's Mr. Sharp who has the greater share of blame here."

Dr. Barlow looks at him, shades of Volger in her expression. "Then it falls to you to be magnanimous, doesn't it? Although I suppose that your family, of late, has begun to run short of charity."

"Magnanimous," Bovril says, delighted with the new word.

"Magnanimous," the other loris repeats. It giggles.

Stiffly, ignoring both animals, he says, "They would argue that I am not part of the family."

"Ah, precisely," she says, pleased. She grasps his chin in her cool, clever fingers and carefully turns his head this way and that. "The swelling is minor. I believe ice will be sufficient. Pity; I've been looking forward to trying out the medicinal leeches."

He jerks away from her touch. "_Leeches?_"

"Entirely unfabricated, I assure you. They produce an anticoagulant, which reduces swelling," she says. Amused now. "As any Darwinist can attest, nature's surgeons are frequently far superior to our modest human efforts, Aleksandar. If you had a wound in need of debridement, I would recommend maggots."

He keeps his face neutral, but inwardly, his opinion of Darwinist medicine drops. Precipitously.

Dr. Barlow smiles as if she's read his thoughts. "But only ice today, as I said. And something for the pain. Do have a seat, Your Highness."

Alek locates a chair and sits while Bovril leaps nimbly from his shoulder and goes to giggle on the floor with the other loris, both of them echoing _magnanimous_ at each other. Dr. Barlow turns and busies herself among the equipment, quickly returning with a washrag folded around a bit of ice, as well as a pill.

He swallows the pill without the benefit of any water, wondering, as he does so, what on earth he's just ingested. Dylan – _Deryn_ – had once said something about Darwinists using mold as medicine. Mold, maggots, and leeches… Never mind the illness; how does anyone survive the _cure_?

"Apply gentle pressure," Dr. Barlow advises, positioning the washrag and putting his hand over it to hold it in place. "Too much will damage the eye."

He follows orders. At first he can hardly feel the cold at all. Then it bites into his skin and seems to stab through his eye, straight to his brain, in such a way as to leave him momentarily short of breath. "H-how long am I to leave this here?"

"I shall let you know," she says, settling into a chair herself as if she means to be staying exactly there for a respectable length of time.

His heart sinks. The only thing worse than a lecture from Volger is one from Dr. Barlow. And yet, if they say nothing, he knows where his thoughts will turn. He's stayed awake until all hours the last few nights, dwelling on that particular subject. Now he has even more to think about.

_It was like that._

_I'm a girl._

_I still love you!_

No. That's not going to work.

"I was wondering, Doctor," he says, then stops, because he has no idea what he means to say next.

"Yes?" she says, flicking her skirts straight. As she dips her head, the brim of her boffin's hat momentarily casts her face entirely in shadow.

Slowly, measuring out the sheer _strangeness_ of the thought, he says, "I was wondering if… if there were any, er, biological reasons that women – that is, why they shouldn't – or rather _couldn't_ - become soldiers. For one example."

"I've never understood why anyone would wish to become a soldier. Violence is a primitive solution at best." She gives him a shrewd look. "What brought on this inquiry?"

Belatedly, his guard goes up, and he begins to wish he hadn't asked. Deryn will kill him if Dr. Barlow learns her secret only because he's terrible at keeping them. He shifts the ice slightly, then winces as it finds skin that isn't halfway numbed. "O-only curious, I suppose."

"Mm. If I might ask first - what are your thoughts on the subject? I would be interested to hear a Clanker perspective."

"I hadn't thought about it much."

She doesn't seem surprised. "Indeed, very few people do - men or women. To answer your question, there are of course differences between male and female physiology that affect what jobs either sex, of any species, are capable of performing."

That echoes what he was always taught. However, instead of being comforted, he feels more conflicted than ever. Deryn is a girl, yet can (and does) out-soldier half of the men in this war. Including, he must admit, himself.

What does _that_ mean?

But Dr. Barlow isn't done.

"The true barrier for humans, however," she continues in a more severe tone, "is cultural, rather than biological. A queen bee cannot suddenly decide to become a drone; a peahen cannot grow meter-long feathers; a bull cannot sprout udders. But there is nothing save the scorn of society to prevent a woman from becoming a doctor. For one example."

Alek finds it difficult to imagine anyone telling Nora Darwin Barlow that she couldn't be a doctor. Along with Volger, she is the most terrifyingly intelligent person he's ever met… but he supposes that's her point.

And what of Deryn? Confident, capable, clever, brave. Lauded as Dylan, who has told her that she can't be an airman as she truly is?

_Aside from me_, he thinks, feeling faintly sick.

Dr. Barlow is waiting for his reaction, face unreadable but eyes gleaming beneath her hat.

"Er, yes. Or a soldier," he says quickly, hoping that none of his thoughts have played out across his face.

She smiles. "Even that. You _have_ heard of the Amazons, I trust."

"Of course -" his classics tutor had been strangely enthusiastic about them "- but they're only a legend."

"The Rani of Jhansi, then, or Boadicea haranguing the Britons. My point being that women in this current age labor under a very proscribed set of appropriate behaviors. Those of us who dare to stretch our wings, as it were, are not looked upon kindly." Dr. Barlow smiles again, humorless and brittle. "Forgive me - I seem to have quite gone on. Is there anything else? No? Excellent. You should leave the ice in place for another ten minutes. Do return if the swelling persists."

"Thank you," he says. He means it, although she's left him more confused than not. Bovril clambers up his leg, his arm, and then curls around his neck.

Dr. Barlow gathers up her own loris as Alek stands, ice obediently in position. "Good night, Your Highness," she says, perfectly cool and composed again.

"Good night, Doctor," he says, bowing politely.

He is not at all upset to have been dismissed so perfunctorily.

In the hallway he lifts the ice away from his face and sighs in relief. "I think that's quite long enough," he tells Bovril, who clucks and chuckles. They return to Alek's stateroom, bypassing both dinner and Count Volger.

Alek discards the washrag, then drops to his bed and leans forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, staring at the floor between his feet. He'll credit Darwinist medicine for speed, at least: the aching around his eye has decreased to a mild twinge. Now he simply has to mend the ache in his chest.

_I still love you._

Except for his parents, no one has ever told him that they love him. And no one – not one soul in the entire world – has ever said it like _that_.

He believes it; he believes Deryn; and it hurts to think that, in blind, wounded anger, he has so deliberately thrown such a gift away.

But how was he supposed to react to all of this? With shouts of joy?

Well, perhaps. He wasn't much thrilled with the idea of liking another boy, although he cannot deny that kissing Dylan was peculiarly exciting, and enjoyable, and… oh, God's wounds, yes he's relieved she's a girl. Delighted, in fact. He wouldn't have otherwise lain awake thinking of those two kisses, these past few nights.

He wouldn't be thinking of them right now.

He sighs.

Bovril inserts itself between his boots and stares up at him, eyes wide.

"What should I do?" he asks it. "Since you're so perspicacious, perhaps your advice will be better than Count Volger's. 'A catastrophe' indeed."

It tilts its head. "Magnanimous," it says softly.

_Be magnanimous_.

He wants to. There, he'll own to it: he wants to be Deryn's friend again. She was right and he was wrong and he _misses_ her. Misses the person he is when she's with him.

How can he, though? How can he go to her and beg forgiveness – he, the Archduke of Austria-Este, cap in hand like a beggar?

And after the way he's treated her… speaking to her as if she were an infant, and not the same fiercely daring friend who's held fast by his side since he first stumbled across her in the _Leviathan_'s frozen shadow.

He feels abruptly overwhelmed. Sighs. Rubs his forehead over his uninjured eye.

"_Dummkopf_," he says to himself. "No wonder she punched you."

The loris makes an unhappy noise, and doesn't stop until Alek picks it up and lets it snuggle into the bedding beside him.

He himself stays where he is, thinking, for a long time.

And he comes to a very difficult, sobering realization, one that leaves him somewhat terrified – but determined nonetheless.

He knows what he must do.


	7. away from me

**Note:** I thought this would be the easiest chapter to write. HA!

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_You make it hard_

_Tearing yourself away from me now_

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_._

"No need to get excited, beastie," Deryn says to Tazza, who's commenced wriggling in her arms as she climbs down the ladder from the gastric channel. She fights back a yawn; it's been a long cruel day and this is the last stop before her bed. "It's the same gondola we left two minutes ago."

Tazza disagrees, obviously, because he doesn't stop squirming about. He's rather too big for Deryn to cart around anyway, and the squirming means she lets go of him instead of setting him down. He doesn't seem to mind.

She gets a faceful of tawny thylacine shoulder for her troubles and is spitting out fur (and scrambling to pick up the leash again) when she realizes why Tazza's so excited.

There are boots on the floor in front of them, and attached to those boots is His Highness the Archduke of Austria-Este.

Barking spiders. She was hoping to ignore him all the way to Tokyo.

"I have to talk to you," he says, as if he's ready for war.

She glances around, but it's just them… and Bovril and Tazza. The thylacine's twisted the leash halfway round them both, and now he's hopping up on his hind legs to sniff at Bovril, who's making fussing noises and is reaching out to Deryn, little clawed fingers flexing and grasping, eyes wide and pitiful.

"_Mr._ Sharp," it says. Pleading. "Magnanimous."

Lord only knows what it's on about now. _Magnanimous._ What does that even _mean_?

"Aye, all right, all right," she says, surrendering with an irritated tug on Tazza's leash, "but not with the whole sodding zoo here."

Heart thudding, she takes Tazza back to Dr. Barlow's cabin. The lady boffin might not want her for an assistant in Japan, but that hasn't cut down her "cabin boy" duties aboard ship. Deryn doesn't mind, to be honest; it's one more thing to keep her mind off of… well, off the boy shadowing her heels.

Punching him felt lovely in the moment, but it was going too far; he didn't deserve it, and it certainly hasn't done her a squick of good in the hours since.

She's sorry and ashamed she hit him. She's angry at him for being a perfect ninny. She's sad that they're not friends. She's terrified he's gone and told the captain her secret. And she's dead heartbroken – still – that he doesn't love her.

She was so sure he would, once he knew. And maybe he would have… if she hadn't bollixed everything up and but good.

Why couldn't she have just kept her sodding hands to herself?

Tazza deposited, Deryn stands in the corridor for a moment, wondering where on earth they should go this time. It depends, she supposes, on what he's intending to do. He looks fidgety, but not in an _I'm going to hit you back_ sort of way – not that he would ever. She's a girl now, and archdukes don't hit _girls_.

No, it's more like an _I have bad news for you_ fidget. He won't look her in the face.

Her heart drops another few degrees. Swallowing, she tells herself to be a soldier about it, and says to him, "My cabin, then."

That way, when he leaves, she can just collapse onto the bed and be miserable straightaway. More convenient.

"Oh," he says, plainly startled. And uneasy: he'd been the one, after all, to point out that they shouldn't be alone together. As if she's going to make a grab for him _now_. "Are you certain…"

No, and if he blethers any longer she might run for it. She covers her fear with bravado, just like a boy: hands on her hips and demanding, "D'you want to talk to me or not?"

He looks at her. The wound under his eye has gone purple-red, she notices; it makes him seem more fragile, not more tough. Guilt hits her low in the gut, and her knuckles throb.

"Yes," he says. "I do."

Bovril chooses that moment to stretch towards her once more. Deryn sighs and puts her hands out, collecting the beastie from Alek's shoulder, taking care not to accidentally touch His Royalness in the process.

The loris curls up around her neck, warm and solid, making little coos of pleasure. Well. At least one of them is happy.

She leads the way again, growing more and more certain with each step that he's told the captain, or is going to tell the captain, and this is only a courtesy visit before her bum is tossed off the ship.

"_Mr._ Sharp," Bovril says, pleased with itself.

"Don't start, beastie," she says to it in an undertone. She's missed the loris, truth be told, but she's not going to let it know. "This is all your fault anyway."

It chuckles. She scowls.

In her cabin, Deryn goes to stand by the bed, arms crossed over her chest, while Alek shuts the door and looks uncomfortable. It's dark in here, but she's not going to whistle up the glowworms just so she can be humiliated in better light.

Bovril hops down from her shoulder and busies itself investigating what's laid across her bed: her dress shirt, still not clean despite her continued efforts. It sneezes at the spices and rubs its nose, clearly put out. Serves the sodding beastie right, if you ask her.

"Well?" she demands of Alek.

He takes a breath. "I've decided that… that I misspoke earlier. I do know what you are."

_I don't even know what you are!_

_That's optimistic of you._

Splinters jab – in her stomach this time. She doesn't care, she tells herself fiercely. It doesn't matter what he thinks. But she can't help asking: "And what's that?"

Alek squares his shoulders and lifts his chin, princely and determined. "A brilliant airman," he says, no hint of doubt or mocking anywhere, only absolute certainty. "And my friend."

Deryn stares. Just stares.

"What?" she says. It comes out a whisper.

He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly a boy and not an archduke any longer. "Or rather, that is, I would _like_ to be friends again. If you'll still have me."

"But –" She's bewildered, then elated, and then remembers to be angry. "A few hours ago, you wanted to stuff me back into skirts and send me to the kitchen!"

He swallows, looking sheepish. "Yes, well… I was wrong. You belong here. You always have."

"Barking spiders," she says, still staring at him. That dog comes to mind, and she wonders if she got it backwards; maybe _he's_ the one slinking hopefully back. "I didn't think I hit you _that_ hard! Has one of the boffins seen you? Your skull's not cracked, is it?"

"No, no, only bruised. And expertly so," he says, touching the battered skin under his eye with a wry smile that does nothing to make her more confident about the state of his attic. "But I did talk to Dr. Barlow about the, ah, proper role of women in society. It was… enlightening."

Icy fear grabs her heart and stops it. Mindful of the thin fabricated balsa walls, she steps closer to him and hisses, "_You told __**Dr. Barlow**__ I was a girl?_"

He has the nerve to look indignant. "Of course not! It was a general sort of conversation only. I never mentioned you."

She puts her hands over her face in disbelief. Maybe not, but she's not going to be reassured. What was she thinking, telling him? - he can't keep a bloody secret to save his life! If he doesn't blurt them right out (after less than _three days_ in Istanbul!), he accidentally drops enough hints for anyone half as clever and sneaky as the lady boffin to puzzle things through.

Oh, that's right - she told him the truth because she wanted him to fall madly in love with her. Now she hasn't got that _or_ a well-kept secret. Sodding hell...

"This just gets worse and worse," she says, muffled because she's talking into her palms. She lifts her hands away and looks hard at him. "Is that all you wanted to tell me?"

He hesitates, looking more fidgety than ever. "Well - you haven't answered my question. Can we still be friends?"

Something very much like grief rolls up from her stomach and lodges high in her chest. Right where her heart used to be.

"Aye," she says, voice dull to her own ears. "Aye, we're friends. We can be barking _friends_ until forever."

He actually smiles at that… until he gets a clear look at her. Then his smile falters and disappears. "Dyl-_Deryn_. You don't have to - that is, if you don't want anything to do with me, I suppose I deserve it – no, I know I deserve it; I had no right to speak to you like that –"

That's wonderful to hear… but it isn't what she wants to hear most.

She draws a ragged breath. "That's not it."

Those three words take all she has, and she hopes he figures the rest out on his own, because she can't say it again. Blisters, she didn't even mean to say it the first time!

After a moment his eyes widen. "_Oh_."

"It's all right," she says. It isn't. Suddenly she's too exhausted and frustrated and sick at heart to be standing any longer, so she sits on the edge of the bed. Slumps over, elbows on her knees, and stares at the floor between her feet. "I knew better from the beginning. It's only… I'm no good at not having the things I want, aye?"

Hesitantly, he comes to stand next to her. "Like flying, you mean."

She nods. _And you_, she adds in her mind.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, sitting beside her. One hand touches her shoulder for a moment before he reconsiders and drops it back into his lap; brief as it was, the contact burns right through her. "Truly, I am. But I've only known what you are for three days."

"Aye, and I've only known _you_ a month longer than that," she retorts. She studies him a moment, then decides to ask the question that's been haunting her since the machine room: "Is it because I'm not… really Dylan?"

"No!" he says, quickly and vehemently. "God's wounds, _nein_. I would rather not kiss boys."

"So it's just me, then," she says, feeling very small.

He looks at her and then at his hands. Sighs ruefully. Does not disagree with her. Instead, he says, "This is all very complicated."

"No it's not," she says, choosing to ignore the wee fact that he's completely right. "Either you love me or you don't. Simplest thing in the world. And you don't, so that's that."

Even she's impressed by how brisk and soldierly her voice sounds. You'd have no idea what it costs her.

It's not so bad, really. She can be an airman... for a few more years at the most, anyway, and then she'll have to find another way to fly. But she will, surely. And just as surely, somewhere along the way, she'll meet another handsome, clever boy with a good heart and sad eyes, who'll make her heart stutter and skin prickle.

This won't kill her. It only feels that way.

"Perhaps that's so," he says slowly. Then glances at her and away again, all in a flash. "But I did enjoy, ah…"

She lifts an eyebrow. "Kissing?"

"Yes," he confesses, coloring red. "It was… exciting. And there was the most curious sensation. Almost like electricity, I suppose."

Hope flickers to life, like glowworms whistled up in the darkness, and she sits a little straighter. "_Dummkopf_. That's exactly how _I_ feel."

He blinks. "Is it?"

She lifts her hand toward his face. He nearly flinches, but checks himself, and she gently, barely, carefully touches the skin on his cheek right below the bruise. The hand she's using is the one she smacked into him, and her knuckles look purple and raw in the dim light. A proper matched set, they are.

_Sorry_, is what this touch means. She hopes the soft expression on his face means he understands.

She _hopes_.

"Every time I see you," she admits.

"Really," he says, in wonder. "Do you mean, that right now…?"

Heat has bloomed under her skin, and she wants very much to loosen her middy's tie. She takes her hand away from his face before she catches fire.

"Aye," she says, sounding like a breathless girl and (for once) not caring. He knows what she is. "Don't you?"

"Yes," he says, barely audible over the sudden mad thumping of her heart.

Those green eyes are very, very close.

"Go on, then," she whispers. A dare or a prayer or a plea, she's not certain which, but she feels the whole barking world holding its breath, waiting for what might happen next. Herself included. A week ago, she would've grabbed him and kissed him – but she's already tried that, and it hasn't worked out very well, aye?

He puts his hand on her shoulder again, like an experiment, and this time he leaves it there. She holds perfectly still, and after a moment, he moves his fingers up to her neck. Along her jaw. Curving around to cup the back of her head.

If someone interrupts this _now_, she thinks wildly, she'll have no choice but to throw them out the sodding window.

Alek's eyes drop to her mouth. She can feel his breath shivering across the skin of her face. They're so close – if she just leans forward a squick -

And then he drops his hand and pulls back and says –

"I can't."


	8. what you are

**Note:** Anonymous reviewer, rest assured that I am completely aware of the etymology of "bollixed." But it's the military… not exactly known for its delicate language… and anyway, Deryn likes to swear. ;)

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_Fear is the lock, and laughter the key to your heart  
__And I love you  
__I am yours, you are mine  
You are what you are _

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He wants to kiss her. God's wounds, he may have never wanted anything more. The electricity in the air is palpable, and the skin of her neck is so wonderfully warm beneath his fingers, and there is an expression on her face that he can't name but that is somehow very… _exciting_, nonetheless.

Even better: seated, they are precisely the same height.

In the moment before he closes the last fraction of distance and kisses Deryn, however, a single stray thought flashes through Alek's mind.

_Is this how my father felt?_

Instantly, all of those pleasant feelings vanish.

"I can't," he blurts out, nearly sick with dread, a dizzy roar of revelation in his ears. He pulls his hand away as if her soft, warm skin has burned him. In many ways, it has.

"Y-you can't?" Deryn says, bewildered.

He should feel guilty about the lost expression on her face, but he's too preoccupied; his heart is thudding at the nearness of this – this _catastrophe_. This _complication he cannot afford_. Oh, Lord help him, he cannot afford this. Volger was right, he ought to have severed things, he should have closed off this possibility forever.

She'd punched him; he could have walked away from their friendship and no one would have thought less of him. There would have been other friends, surely. There would have been boys – actual _boys_ – his own age and rank. He didn't need to stubbornly persist with this one, _improper_ girl.

"I wanted to apologize for my earlier behavior," he says, shutting his eyes tightly. "I wanted to – salvage our friendship. I did not mean to imply anything else." He opens his eyes, blinking dancing spots away, to see her still frozen and looking stunned. "I'm sorry. I should go."

He rises, very much in a hurry to leave –

- and is promptly yanked back down by an iron hand clamped around his wrist.

Deryn has come unfrozen.

"Not on your life, Aleksandar Ferdinand!" she says in a heated whisper, scowling ferociously. "You keep your bum planted _right barking here_ until we get this sorted, once and for all!"

"What do you expect us to resolve?" he says crossly, anxious to be gone.

She blinks, taken aback, and then her eyes narrow again. "Well, first off, why your tongue's not in my mouth!"

The mental picture and remembered sensations _that_ conjures up send a fresh bolt of electricity skittering through his stomach… but such a reaction only rather serves to confirm the worst, doesn't it?

The dread intensifies.

He takes a steadying breath against vulgar Darwinists and says, trying to sound as reasonable as possible, "I don't believe that would be a prudent idea –"

She explodes. "Bloody hell, Alek! Why not? You just said –"

A hair's breadth from full panic, he hastily shoves a hand over her mouth. "Shhh! Are you mad! Do you want everyone to know what we're doing in here?"

She tries to talk with his hand still in place, and the sensation of her mouth moving against his palm almost makes his heart stop. He pulls back. Quickly. And stands, just for good measure.

"We aren't doing sodding _anything_," Deryn hisses. "That's the point!"

"I know - I apologize - I can't," he says, giving in to the urge to rub his hand on his trousers. For his own sanity, he must get the sensation of her lips off of his skin. It's a mistake, however; she catches the movement, and her face hardens.

"Why _not_?" she demands again, standing as well. To confront him.

He takes a half-step backwards.

Not that he expects another blow to the face - but it never hurts to be cautious.

"It's – complicated," he says, hedging. Perhaps he can escape without actually admitting to anything. Perhaps Volger or Dr. Barlow or Newkirk or _someone_ will interrupt this. Or perhaps he can reach the cabin door…

Her eyes dart to the door, and then somehow she's standing between him and it. Blast. It's the same trick he used on her, three days ago in the machine room… and thinking about how _that _turned out is not helping either.

"Aye, so you said." She puts her hands on her hips. Challenging him. "But pretend I haven't a brain in my head and explain it to me."

"Must I?"

The black look that she gives him, he is fairly certain, could frighten the tentacles off of a kraken. "You didn't deserve that first punch, but you're barking earning the next one, laddie! You can't tell me you want to kiss me and then run away like a scairt wee rabbit!"

"I am hardly –" he begins, indignant, then stops himself. He's unsettled, but doesn't want to argue with her; he suspects she doesn't truly want to argue with him, either.

Something she confirms when she says, "Just tell me _why_, Alek. Please. I can't take it, all this up and down. Is it because I'm not - because I'm not much of a girl?"

There are, he realizes suddenly, tears in her eyes.

God's wounds.

It would be easy to let her assume that the fault lies with her. He could nod, and she would step aside, and he could leave without ever having to speak the truth. And eventually this fracture in their friendship would heal over - perhaps not as perfectly smooth as it might have been, but enough to pretend.

It would be so easy. And cowardly.

Whatever else he may be, he is not a coward.

_Be magnanimous_.

He takes a deep breath and steels himself. "It isn't anything like that. I... You're my friend, Deryn."

She nods, appearing to be nearly as trepidatious about this as he.

He takes another breath and looks carefully at the floor. "You are my _only_ friend. And I don't think… that I could survive h-having to choose."

"Choose what?" she asks, voice a whisper.

Humiliation pricks at the backs of his eyes, and he blinks several times. He forces the next words out, each one dragging like a walker's dead limb: "Between friendship and… and love."

The last word hangs in the dimly-lit air for a painful eternity. And then Deryn steps forward and pulls him into a fierce hug, her arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders, and he finds himself holding on with equal desperation, even though he knows he should push her away.

This is how it ends, then; this is where eight hundred proud years of the House of Hapsburg unravel: in a darkened midshipman's cabin on a British airship, half a world from Vienna.

Because the Archduke of Austria-Este is in love with a common girl, and he isn't strong enough to push her away.

_Some emperor you'll be!_

_I'm sorry, Father_, he thinks. He blinks hard.

He will not cry in front of Deryn.

Well. Not _again_, at any rate.

"Oh, Alek," she says softly, shifting her arms, holding him closer. Her breath tickles against his ear; her hair tickles against his cheek. It's a reassuring embrace – or it would be, if he weren't so ashamed by his admission. "Poor boy. It's all right."

An echo of panic bubbles up, displacing his melancholia, and he stiffens and leans back, separating them. "It mostly certainly is _not_. I should be a mile away by now. Perhaps two. This is exactly what I was supposed to avoid!"

She rolls her eyes. "Sod off and calm down. It _will_ be all right, then. We'll make it all right - you and me together. Trust me, aye?"

He looks at her. He's known her for less than two months, known the truth about her for a mere three days, and yet somehow hearing her say that it will be all right makes him believe that it very well may be. "I do trust you," he says. Wondering. Is this part of providence's mad design? Is _she _part of it? It must be; it makes no sense otherwise.

"Good," she says firmly. "You ought to."

And then she leans down and presses her mouth gently to his.

It's the sort of kiss that ought to have been their first, instead of their third: tentative and soft and sweet, lips brushing, breath catching. Electricity shivers across his skin from head to toe, leaving a tingling warmth in its wake. An astonishing new world unfolds in those few seconds, bright and full of promise.

She draws back; her blue eyes meet his; and he suddenly does not want anything gentle or sweet.

"Deryn," he says, swallowing heavily against the dryness of his throat. "I think – would you mind –"

"Not a squick."

He kisses her, and – God's wounds – everything fragments into flashes of sensation: the delighted sound she makes in her throat when he pushes forward, how her hand tightens on his jacket sleeve so that her fingertips dig into his arm, the unexpected heat curling and pooling at the base of his spine, how fast his heart is pounding, the soft, wet sucking noise when their mouths separate for breath.

Then one of them gets the angle wrong and their teeth clack painfully together, and that's rather the end of that.

Alek backs away, one hand going to his mouth even as he curses in German.

"Barking _spiders_," Deryn says, words muffled because she's rubbing at her mouth. "That hurts!"

"It does," he agrees, though having been the recent victim of both, he much prefers a throbbing mouth to a throbbing eye. "Perhaps we shall need more practice?"

She straightens and gives him an approving look. "Aye – and that's the most sense you've made all week."

He smiles, abashed, as she reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from his forehead. It seems natural. All of this seems natural, and indeed has from the beginning, if he's to be honest with himself… except that it is completely against everything he knows he should be doing.

_Some emperor you'll be!_

_A complication you cannot afford._

But - no.

_It's all right... We'll make it all right._

_You and me together._

He is more than her friend; he is _hers_, and she, likewise, is _his_. The more he thinks about it, the more he finds the idea... thrilling, really.

That being said: there are still some obstacles that spring to mind.

"What _are_ we to do?" he asks, uncertain again. "This can't work, Deryn. It can't possibly. We'll be discovered – your secret - I wouldn't want to be the reason you were forced off the _Leviathan_."

Of all things, her mouth quirks up into a lopsided grin. "Then you'd better not call me 'Deryn' where people can hear, your archdukeness."

"I'm perfectly serious!"

"Aye, so am I - you're pure dead terrible at keeping secrets." She frowns. "For that matter, we're going to have to be careful not to get caught out kissing."

She seems to take it as a certainty that there will be more kissing. Despite his misgivings, he can't say that he feels inclined to argue on that point. But she's correct; they will especially have to keep a close watch on -

The same thought occurs to both of them at the same moment, and they say in horrified unison, "Bovril!"

When they turn to look, the loris is sitting up on the bed, bright-eyed and amused… if a fabricated loris can look amused.

"Kissing," Bovril says cheerfully.

"_Das ist einfach wunderbar_," Alek says, not meaning it at all. The dread returns to his chest in a tight, nauseating rush. God may have room in His plans for this, but Count Volger most certainly does not.

"Sodding hell," Deryn says to the loris. She sounds as though she hasn't decided whether to laugh or choke. "You saw all of that, didn't you?"

"All of that," Bovril says. It giggles and hops down from the bed in order to more effectively waddle about and be adorable.

Alek does not find the creature particularly adorable at this moment.

"Volger is going to have my head," he says to no one.

"No he won't – you're going to be his barking emperor." Deryn crouches and collects the loris, who giggles as it clambers across her shoulders. "You can have _his_ head."

She's right, he realizes; Volger can't advise him to be imperial _and_ treat him like a disobedient child. Well. That makes things look quite a bit better.

"And if he tries to blackmail me, like he said he'd do," she adds, "I hope you sodding take it."

"Blackmail. _Mr._ Sharp," Bovril says. More giggles.

"I think the beastie's having more fun with this than we are," Deryn says.

"I very much doubt that," Alek says without thinking (or rather, thinking about kissing her instead of what he's saying), then feels an embarrassed heat rising in his face as she gives him an incredulous look. He rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. "I'm sorry. I thought – well, I had forgot it was here."

She colors red as well. "Aye, me too. Blisters. It was right there in the observation bubble, too, wasn't it, that first time? I can't believe it hasn't talked about us from one end of the ship to the other."

"Friend," the loris says, gazing at Deryn with those enormous eyes. "Love."

Alek reaches over to scratch its small furry head behind the ears. "Perhaps it will be _very_ perspicacious and never mention certain things it has observed. Won't you, Bovril?"

"Magnanimous," Bovril says, eyes slitted nearly shut in pleasure, making an ecstatic purring sound.

"Blisters! What's that even _mean_?" Deryn asks with a scowl. "Everyone on this barking ship keeps using words I don't know, even the beasties. It's dead tiresome."

Alek frowns, thinking. " 'Generous', I believe, is the closest word. Or 'charitable'."

"Aye, right, of course. Good beastie; keep on being magnanimous and we'll get you something nice in Tokyo," she says, giving the loris a few scratches herself before glancing, sideways and sly, at Alek. "And maybe _you'll_ be magnanimous yourself now, and actually say it."

He blinks as she plucks the loris from her shoulder and sets it down on the floor again. "I will actually say what?"

One of her hands finds his and draws him close again. " '_I love you'._"

"Oh," he says, going cold and then hot and then cold again. Will he have to confess his failures _aloud_ now? "Well. I don't – are you certain that this will be all right?"

"Barking spiders!" she says, exasperated. "Of course it'll be fine! Come on, Clanker – three words. What've you got to lose?"

He looks up at her. _An imperial crown_ comes to mind, as does _Your friendship_, should he choose to say nothing.

And which of those is worth more?

_Is this how my father felt?_ he thinks again. This time, it's not half so appalling. He holds tightly to her hand. "I... Oh, God's wounds, this shouldn't be so difficult! You managed it with a swarm of those disgusting bees flying about -"

"Just say it quick," she advises, biting down on a grin. "You can punch me first, if it helps."

"I don't believe that will be necessary." He takes her other hand and says in a determined rush, "I love you."

Astounding and absurd, how three words can set your heart racing and every limb trembling; how they can shatter you and leave you stronger than ever.

The smile breaks across her face like sunrise. Wide and delighted, he can't help but return it, although he knows he must look a perfect fool. Well, they can look like fools together - just so long as they aren't where anyone else can see.

"Was that really so barking difficult, then?" she asks.

He draws himself up to his full height, stiff and indignant. "Yes, it rather was," he says, and for some unfathomable reason (there is nothing funny about this, after all) they both succumb to laughter in fits and starts - a situation made all the more amusing by the need for quiet.

Then - "Shut your eyes, beastie," Deryn orders the loris.

And then, as Alek hoped she would, she kisses him.


	9. got to lose

**Note:** Here we are at the end, at last! Thank you to everyone who reviewed - you kept me sane and focused on the finish line. :)

There may be a sequel and there may not, but if there is, it will be because I came up with (what I feel to be) a worthy idea, and not because folks pestered me into submission. _So don't pester me_. LOL

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___I've got an answer  
__I'm going to fly away  
__What have I got to lose?_

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Of all the places to sulk aboard the _Leviathan_, the officers' mess is probably the least effective.

Still, it's where Newkirk finds himself that morning, picking morosely at his breakfast. It may as well be his last meal, although they won't be landing until the day after tomorrow at the very earliest. The thought of what lies ahead makes everything tasteless, anyway.

_Diplomacy_. Hours and hours of it. And with his luck, they'll all be speaking Japanese.

"Good morning, Mr. Newkirk," a voice says behind him, and so obnoxiously cheerful that he has to turn around to see if it really is who he thinks it is.

"Mr. Sharp," Newkirk says, bewildered, as the other middy drops down to sit with him. "What's going on?"

"Good morning," says the loris on Sharp's shoulder.

Newkirk instinctively moves to cover his food, but Sharp has no qualms about eating with a beastie shedding all over his plate. The other middy does give Newkirk a funny look, however, as he begins to tuck in. "What d'you mean? I'm eating breakfast, ninny."

"But you're… happy." Newkirk squints. "You've been miserable as a wet cat all week, and you look dead knackered now. Why are you happy?"

Sharp shrugs. There are shadows under his eyes and he's yawning every few bites, but the smile seems glued to his face. "What have I got to lose?"

Newkirk gives up. As much as he likes and respects the boy, Dylan Sharp seems to always be running five steps ahead of him. "That doesn't make any sense."

Another careless shrug. "Maybe not to you, aye?"

"Happy," says the loris.

Newkirk tries not to let it show, how much the creature rattles him. Those enormous staring eyes, the spidery fingers and toes, that inhuman little _voice_… it's perfectly horrid. "I suppose. Here now, Mr. Sharp, could you not have left that thing with the prince?"

Sharp _hmphs_. "Monkey Luddite. It's just a loris."

The beastie stares at him, eyes practically glowing, and Newkirk abruptly loses his appetite. "Not all of us want to eat our breakfasts with a _loris_."

"Too bad for you, then. Oh, but I've some good news," Sharp adds around a mouthful of food. "Alek's had a word with the lady boffin. I'm on, you're off."

It takes Newkirk a moment to understand that. Then, when he does, he can't help but let out a whoop entirely unbecoming a junior officer of the British Air Service.

Sharp rolls his eyes. "Aye, that's what I thought you'd say."

Some of the officers are looking. Embarrassed now, Newkirk ducks his head and says in a low voice, "I can't ever thank you enough. All that standing about and _talking_ -!"

The other middy starts to reply, but is cut off by a sudden dark shadow falling across the table.

"Mr. Newkirk," Dr. Barlow says, cool and polite as always. She looks down at Sharp, her own loris curled about her neck. "And _Mr_. Sharp… I believe you and I need to have a few words, at your very earliest convenience."

"_Mr_. Sharp," the lady boffin's loris says, delighted.

"Don't call him that," Sharp's loris says, scolding, sounding exactly like Alek. Er, the prince.

"Precisely," Dr. Barlow says, voice several degrees more chill. "In point of fact, we shall talk _now_, Mr. Sharp."

Newkirk hides his wince, but can't blame Sharp for going deathly white. Indeed, he thinks, finishing his coffee as the lady boffin marches Sharp off somewhere - indeed, that woman's the most fearsome weapon Britain has.

He's barking glad he's not going into Tokyo with her.

.

.

.

END


End file.
